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Oyster Extension Permits
Does anyone here have a Zone 1-2 Oyster Travelcard, but occasionally use National Rail to take them into zones further out? The reason I ask is that I have a Z1-2 pass, but sometimes change onto National Rail at Hi&I or Finsbury Park to get to Harringay, Ali Pally, Palmers Green, etc. Of course I always touch out, and I had assumed that when doing so I would simply be charged for the additional zones using my pay-as-you-go top-up.
Apparently this is not the case. One is supposed to acquire an ‘Oyster Extension Permit’ prior to the journey from a TFL outlet, at which point you will be charged from your PAYG once you touch out. Failure to do so can lead to penalty fines or prosecution! Apparently this is to discourage people from ticket-dodging at NR stations without ticket barriers. Now I’m pretty sure I’ve not been hit by any penalties, but on the other hand I’m rubbish at keeping track of that sort of thing so maybe I have been… anyone else had experience/problems with this?
Comments
Renationalise, at least then we're not lining shareholders' pockets with our rail misery.
It's also worth pointing out in this thread that the penalty fare for not touching in/out at the start/end of your journey has just gone up to £6.50.
I'd pull every commuter service into London into the London Overground network, so going all the way out into Hertfordshire, Essex, Berkshire, Surrey, Kent etc.
While I'm loathe to give TFL more power, this is the only way I can see of controlling/bringing down fares and what is an essential service for people going to work. It would also create a massive economy of scale.
If you have to have privatised rail let it be long distance, where people have the closest thing approaching a choice of how to travel
Nationalisation would be my first choice.
The difference is that LUL stations are supposed to be manned throughout opening hours (as with London Overground stations), so there's some kind of checking that everyone "touches out" and gets a fare deducted from their PAYG. NR stations don't have that requirement. Well, not yet.
Zone 1-2 season travelcard users don't have a deduction taken from their PAYG when they enter a zone1-2 station as quite a few of them don't have PAYG on their oystercards. So there's quite a large opportunity to fare dodge if you exit at an NR station without tapping out.
However, this doesn't apply on the way back. So if you travel from Harringey to Moorgate on a Z1-2 season ticket with PAYG, you only have to tap in at Harringey for the reader to register it as a journey. Because at that point, the reader takes a deposit for the journey, and if a ticket inspector finds you they can fine/prosecute you for not tapping in fairly easily - there's no excuses left.
The easy way to solve this is to give all the Z1-2 season ticket holders the choice to have PAYG on their oystercards - if they do, then they have to promise to tap in and tap out on every journey or accept the maximum fare, just like normal PAYG users, even if the journey's still covered by the travelcard. The fact they haven't done this probably shows that the cost of implementing it isn't worth the extra money they'd make from stopping fare evasion despite the inconvenience to passengers. I.e. TfL can't be arsed.
Not a lot that can be done - rules is rules - but if you're ever given a penalty fare for this, I'd suggest you write a letter to FCC (or whoever), complaining of false advertising about PAYG. If it isn't genuinely pay-as-you-go, then any train company advertising them as valid on their services without a true pay-as-you-go nature would seem to be on thin ice ...
You are right, on a evaluation of rail privatisation level, they don't really have a choice at all. After all, you can't decide the train fare to Newcastle is too pricey, so you'll take advantage of competition and use another rail firm because then you'll end up in a completely different place.
The removal of choice is a fundamental flaw in the entire system, but over long distances and less regular travel it impacts less than say someone commuting from St Albans to work.
We studied the proposed rail privatisation for our A-level economics coursework, the arguments we picked out as schoolchildren against the idea are the same problems that have left us with a shit and ludicrously expensive rail system not the shiny better value future we were promised.
I wanted to write that this is a fact that never ceases to amaze me, but on reflection I actually find it in no way suprising.
Arkady, TFL missed a trick when the FCC franchise was issued then, especially as the halfwits have made both the line through Finsbury Park and the Thameslink line worse.
*assuming we make it that far, and corporate feudalism hasn't been formalised so there's still education for the proles.
The way PAYG works is that when you touch in then the PAYG 'maximum fare' is deducted from your card, and when you touch out, the difference between that and the correct fare is refunded.
The way a travelcard on Oyster works is that nothing is deducted when you touch in within your zones. It will still record the entry and as I'm sure you know if you end your journey outside your zones it will charge the correct fare from your PAYG balance when you touch out.
But if you just never touch out, you will not be charged. So there's an obvious fraud - touch in within your zones, and leave at an ungated station outside your zones, and you can dodge the fare simply by not touching out.
Now, for whatever reason, TfL were happy with this, either because they think the revenue they lose through people exploiting this loophole is small, or because they have some cunning plan for catching people who exploit it - i dunno.
Now, AIUI some of the Train Operating Companies that operate on National Rail were *not* happy with this loophole. They wanted a system where a ticket inspector on the train could tell whether you've paid, just as they can with a paper ticket, rather than in effect trusting you to pay when you leave the station.
What the OEP on your card does is effectively switch the next journey to PAYG rules *even if you touch in within your zones*. So when you touch in within your zones you will be charged the 'maximum fare' just as PAYG users are. When you touch out, it will refund the difference between the fare taken and the correct fare (and I believe it will correctly refund the entire initial amount taken if you touch out within your zones - although in that case using an OEP was obviously rather pointless!). And if you fail to touch out, you will be left with that maximum fare for your unresolved journey - just as PAYG users are.
Implementing this was the price of reaching agreement to roll out Oyster on NR.
Technically it's true that you can be charged a penalty fare (or even prosecuted!) for failing to get an OEP although posters to uk.transport.london seem to suggest this is not being implemented on the ground. As long as you touch in and out you *will* be charged the correct fare - the problem is just if you encounter an inspector en route he has no way of knowing whether you're a fare dodger or whether you genuinely intend to touch out at the far end.
I suggest if you want to know more then you use Google Groups to browse past postings to uk.transport.london and if you still can't find your answers, post a question there.
-roy (N4-curious but still hoping to become actual N4 soon)
Consider this first scenario:
You touch in in central London on your way home from work, and leave at Finsbury Park without touching out.
Shortly after getting home, you realize you need to make a journey from Finsbury Park to Zone 3 and go back to the station where you need to touch in. But when you try to do so you find that you haven't yet exceeded the maximum journey time for your journey home so the system registers your touch as a touch out of your original journey. Now, being aware of the problem and paying attention to the display you see it flash up EXIT and so touch your card again to register an entry - but the system just registers it as a double touch and repeats EXIT.
Now this one is easy to fix, I think. AIUI you just need to wait a short tme (two minutes?) between it flashing up EXIT before touching again and it will flash up ENTRY and you're good to go.
But what if you weren't paying attention and hadn't spotted that it had flashed up EXIT? Unbeknownst to you, you'd be travelling on a PAYG journey without having touched in. At best (and most likely) you'd be charged a maximum fare as a penalty when you touch out -- worst case scenario and you'd be facing the full force of the law for travelling without a validated Oyster card.
You can see why the advice is to always touch in and touch out. Basically as I see it you have three options:
1. Always touch in and touch out
2. Never travel outside your zones, in which case you need only touch where necessary in order to open gates, or
3. Understand the intricacies of the system in their gory, geeky detail, to figure out exactly when you can get away without touching, when you can't, and when you *kinda* can, *but*...
-roy